Performance Anxiety: The Difficult Second Issue

500?! From zero to 500 subscribers in less than a week? And many of you are people I genuinely look up to. After posting last week’s issue and seeing my subscriber count skyrocket, I suddenly realized what I had done.

A newsletter? Really? Writing something new and at least slightly intelligent every week?

The clock’s ticking… The next issue is due in 7, 6, 5, 4,…

So, I decided to write about Google and how they’ve fallen behind. PageRank isn’t as effective as it used to be, and AI Overview is underwhelming, recommending eating pebbles and gluing cheese to pizza. Google needs to fix PageRank first for AI Overview to work properly. Nailed it!

But then, the evening before publishing, I scoured the internet to double-check my facts. Nope. PageRank, which I thought was the culprit, isn’t used to weigh the information Google feeds to its LLMs. Darn. But, at least, I dodged a bullet. I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself to my AI expert friends (psst, don't tell them).

…3, 2, 1,…

There! An article about gratitude, how much help I’ve received throughout my life, and the importance of helping others succeed. About “paying it forward.” Okay. Let’s go!

But… Oh God, this is really cheesy. And, a bit too similar to the first issue of the newsletter, about the importance of purpose. Not. Good. Enough.

…0. Time's up!

Why are follow-ups so tricky? Why is the second album rarely as good as the first? Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” was a massive success. Still, her 1998 follow-up “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” wasn’t nearly as good. And Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” didn’t sell nearly as well as “When We All Fall Asleep.”

I'm not claiming that the first issue is a masterpiece (far from it), but it's obvious that time pressure and performance anxiety make things harder.

But then, suddenly, I remember. Why should I care? I was clear from the start:

"I’m starting a newsletter. It’s not for you. It’s for me. I know. The world does not need another newsletter. You don’t need another newsletter. But I love writing. And I’ve promised myself to spend more time writing going forward. I’ll try to make it interesting. But there are no guarantees. Again. I’m doing this for me."

I remind myself: I’m writing for me.

So, in the coming weeks, you’ll read about why Google will lose its search dominance. Before then, you’ll likely also read a cheesy post about some of the people who have been really important in my professional life and why I think generosity is a critical success factor.

But today, this is what you got. Because, #performanceanxiety.

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Me? I am a designer turned entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. I’m the CEO of Ambition, where we help organizations enhance their design, UX, and CX capabilities through consulting, recruitment, and our continuous training program, Ambition Empower. I’m also on the board of Touchtech, a SaaS platform that frees salespeople from tedious tasks, allowing them more time with customers.

In 2002, I co-authored the book “Anv?ndbarhet i Praktiken” (Usability in Practice) and co-founded inUse, a leading Business, Service, and UX design agency in Sweden with 100+ amazing designers and strategists. In 2007, I co-founded From Business to Buttons, one of Europe’s premier UX and Service Design conferences with, at its peak, 1000+ participants. To leverage the reach and power of a larger corporation, we sold inUse, including the conference, in 2017.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Happy to connect if you want. ??